have we allowed it to happen ?”
Same thing ’ s going to happen here . We sued the PBM industry . Finally , the media ’ s paying attention to it . You ’ re seeing New York Times articles , you ’ re seeing magazine articles , and people are going , “ I ’ ve never heard of this ,” but that ’ s how things evolve . But it takes the American public getting so damn angry that they ’ ll make the telephone calls and they ’ ll organize , but the real sad thing about it is there could be executive orders coming right from the administration that could solve a lot of this .
I think there ’ s been some talk about it with this administration . I don ’ t know where that ’ s going to go , but I know where we ’ re going to go . I know the book , the importance of the book is to say , “ Here , learn this . Learn about Devlin from Ireland , who ’ s a mobster that ’ s come to America , and the mobster is now moving into what we call the legal pharmaceutical business .” Because the mobster says , “ Why would I take a chance selling illegal drugs when I can make a lot more money selling legal drugs ? I can mark them up . I can extort people if they don ’ t play by my rules , I can do all of these things .”
Why would they take a chance ?
Farron :
I think what some folks want to know here is obviously , as you mentioned earlier , you ’ ve been doing this for 40 years . You have this wealth of knowledge with these cases that you ’ ve handled . What has inspired you through that ? What made you finally decide , I have to put these into these books , I have to create these characters and tell these stories ? What inspired you to hit that point where you said , “ I have to get more people to know ”?
Mike :
Yeah , the way I see my responsibility here is we have built a law firm that ’ s regarded as one of the top five firms in America , where we represent people who ’ ve been affected by dangerous products . They ’ ve been affected by toxic pollutants . They ’ ve been affected by all of these things that ’ s hard to get your arms around , but there ’ s only a handful of us that even do this . But as I ’ ve been doing it , I ’ ve found that I get angrier and angrier . I have the luxury of writing books and for whatever reason , it ’ s been natural to me . I was a news-editing major at University of Florida . I was a journalist , that ’ s where I was headed . Here I am in the middle of all this intrigue . It literally is intrigue . The tobacco case , that was huge . Opioids , human trafficking , there ’ s this intrigue , but it ’ s not fiction . It ’ s really happening .
It allows me to take those stories and fictionalize them , create great characters . It ’ s so easy to love Deke and Michael and Jake and Carol and these characters that have been around for ... What ? 11 years now . All the way back to the first book , Law & Disorder . There ’ s been all these books in , but it ’ s the same family . You ’ ve watched that family grow to the point now the children of some of these people are now involved in these cases working as lawyers . The interesting thing to me is I sometimes think , why am I doing this ? A , I think I ’ m pretty good at it . B , they ’ re great stories . They ’ re easy to tell , and they are page-turners . I don ’ t have to put in a lot of bells and whistles to make somebody turn a page . It ’ s really happening .
Farron :
Look , I ’ ve known you for 20 years and I know that whatever it is you ’ re doing right now is actually not what you ’ re really doing because you ’ re already working on other things . When you ’ re out there talking about one thing , you ’ ve got the next probably four or five already in your head . After The Middleman , what ’ s coming next ? What ’ s next for you ?
Mike :
I think it maybe one of my favorite books . I love Middleman , don ’ t get me wrong , but I think every author will tell you that there ’ s something that they ’ ve written that ’ s very personal , it ’ s very precise , and about them or their experiences . The book that comes out after Middleman is one of those books . It ’ s about the institutionalization of reform schools for kids that aren ’ t really bad kids . They may have gotten into some minor trouble . Maybe they don ’ t have a place to live . Maybe they ’ re on the street and they ’ re sent to reform schools . They ’ re sent to situations , where the abuse is so bad . That the case I handled , it was a case I handled . It was three hours from Pensacola , where kids were beat to death . They were sexually assaulted on a regular basis . There ’ re graves on the site where it all happened that are unmarked graves . Then you think , well , okay , well that ’ s only happening to just a small crowd of people .
Then you see the rest of that story . The judges were involved in sending these kids away to places like that to get paid money . They got kickbacks for sending these kids to institutions like that . I think it ’ s a really important book , but we all have those things that they ’ re our sweet spot . We know it . I know everything I write about it because I do it all day long , all week long too . I look at this one and I say , “ Wow , this is one that I think I really feel good about getting this story out ,” because nobody knows these stories . Nobody would even dream . Paris Hilton , the first time I had spoke to Paris Hilton and interviewed her about it , she had been through it . She had been abused in four different schools like that . Nobody knew that story , but when she tells the story , people go , “ Good gosh . How did this get past my range of sight ?”
66 The Trial Lawyer